free-format input

[mdh]

An example on p96 of K&R II shows how to use pointers. It's a function
called getint to perform "free-format input conversion".
Once again, sorry for the question...but what exactly is "free-format
input"? Is there "non-free format input". It is obviously significant,
else it would not have been mentioned.
Thanks in advance.

[Jack Klein]

On 13 Nov 2006 18:33:36 -0800, "mdh" <md**@comcast.netwrote in
comp.lang.c:

An example on p96 of K&R II shows how to use pointers. It's a function
called getint to perform "free-format input conversion".
Once again, sorry for the question...but what exactly is "free-format
input"? Is there "non-free format input". It is obviously significant,
else it would not have been mentioned.
Thanks in advance.

This is not exactly a C language specific question.

The opposite would be fixed format input conversion, for example a
program that only reads data from fixed columns, or in fixed formats.

An example of fixed format input might be a file containing:

+32.767
-16.383
+00.000

Where every line must contain a + or - sign in the first character,
followed by two digits, a decimal point, and three more digits. Any
deviation would be considered an input error and rejected.

--
Jack Klein
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[mdh]

Jack Klein wrote:

>
This is not exactly a C language specific question.

yes...I thougth so...but thanks for that.